Lowering the legal drinking age?

College presidents from about 100 of the nation’s universities are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying that current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus. Do you think the drinking age should be lowered? (Read a related story.)

This is a no brainer for a politician. You have the teetotaling activist groups that vote. Then you have young people who technically can vote but don’t. Which group do you care more about?

David

Back in the days of 3.2% beer in Colorado, the kids had training wheels so to speak. Today, they have nothing. Lower the drinking age, if they are old enough to vote and to fight for our country, they are old enough to drink.

Valan

This is an issue I have been passionate about for years. The well-meaning lowering of the drinking age to reduce drunk-driving has had many unintended consequences, and unfortunately they are mostly negative ones.
Expecting college age adults to have zero legal options for socializing with alcohol is madness. This invariably leads to illicit drinking and drugs, and when young adults obtain illicit alcohol, it surely isn’t going to be 3.2% beer! They are going to get the hardest stuff they can find, and that is going to be vodkas, schnapps, and other high-proof grain alcohols. The college-age environment of all-night partying, drinking games, and the like, mean that young adults are consuming enourmous quantities of high-proof alcohol instead of beer. It seems obvious that binge-drinking higher proof alcohol is going to lead to more deaths both from alcohol poisoning and from dangerous activities such as driving while drunk.
The lessons we didn’t learn with prohoibition keep coming back to bite us. We need to take moderate and well-thought out measures. The old model of 3.2% beer nightclubs was perfect. A regulated environment where a relatively safe product was comsumed in a fun social environment. Today we have the 3.2 club replacement, Raves, where Extascy and all means of other drugs and hard liquors are consumed in combination. With all due respect to MADD, we need to change the laws regarding young adult drinking before our culture progresses too far towards the ones I have observed in Iceland and Scandinavia, where young people drink themselves to death on hard liquor as a matter of course.

Brad

It is amazing to read some of the insane arguments made against lowering the drinking age — do a little research and have some common sense before voicing your opinions — First, it has been stated that since raising the drinking age in the U.S. drunk driving fatalities have declined — that’s funny — maybe it’s because police enforcement against drunk driving has risen dramatically or maybe it’s because people actually wear seat belts now and don’t die as often in crashes or possibly it’s because it has become socially unacceptable to drink and drive — do you think those factors may play into it just a bit people? If 21 is so much safer, then why does Canada have a drinking age of 18 in many provinces and 19 in others, yet their drinking and driving fatalities are no worse than in the U.S. In 2004, there were roughly 1150 drunk driving fatalities in Canada, representing 38.4% of traffic fatalities, while there were roughly 16700 in the U.S. Representing 39% of traffic fatalities — if raising the age has helped so much then why the similar numbers? Lastly, if drinking at a younger age encourages more consumption then why was the average per capita consumption of Alcohol in Canada 7.9 liters while it was 8.39 in the U.S. in 2003 — give me a break..

Matt

It seems to me that we might as well lower the drinking age. Most all of my friends who aren’t even 18 drink and no one even enforces it. It has become more of a “cool factor” amongst underage kids to be rebellious. We could just give them one less thing to rebel about

I am underage and I admit it is easy enough for me to get drinks and even drugs (though I don’t personally utilize this fact)

Besides, I’m sure the government could benefit from more people being able to buy and consume alcohol since they make a killing off of the tax that is on every purchase.